"Iraqis have asked the defence team to study the legal conditions to present Saddam Hussein as a candidate for elections, first as an MP then as president," Jordan's Al-Dustour daily quoted former Qatari justice minister Najib al-Nuaimi as saying.

"If this contradicts the legal system then president Saddam will be nominated simply as a candidate," he said Wednesday, without specifying if Saddam could try to run in the December 15 election.

Nuaimi is among three foreign lawyers along with former US attorney general Ramsey Clark and Jordanian lawyer Issam Ghazzawi who were sworn in by the Iraqi court as members of Saddam's defence at Monday's hearing.

Asked by AFP about Nuaimi's reported remarks, Ghazzawi said: "As we were leaving Iraq on Tuesday ordinary Iraqis at the airport approached us saying they wished that Saddam would return (as president)."

"These Iraqis said 'we have lost security after Saddam, how we wish he would return'," Ghazzawi said.

The defence team considers Saddam, who was ousted by a US-led invasion force in April 2003, as Iraq's "legitimate president".

As the trial of Saddam and seven co-defendants accused of charges against humanity resumed Monday in Baghdad some 500 people demonstrated in his hometown of Tikrit in support of the former dictator.

Protestors dismissed the trial as unfair, hailed Saddam as Iraq's "legitimate president" and poured scorn on the Shiite-dominated government of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari .

Saddam and his co-accused have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and torture related to a massacre of Shiites that followed a botched assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail in 1982.

Saddam and the other defendants could face the death penalty if convicted